“Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.”

El hombre es débil y cuando ejerce la profesíon de fuerte es más débil.
Voces (1943)

Source: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), p. 15

Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Diary of an Unknown (1988), On Invisibility
Context: Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal... unnable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort, the trifling feeling of escape experienced at a masked ball. He distances himself from that which he feels and sees. He invents. He transfigures. He mythifies. He creates. He fancies himself an artist. He imitates, in his small way, the painters he claims are mad.

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 29
Context: Ethically and morally, man has also made progress. From the earliest dawn of recorded history strong men made slaves of the weak. Primitive man regarded woman much as he did a slave or an animal, an instrument through which his comfort and pleasure might be increased. Contrast the former custom of exposing infants, the aged, and the helpless to the elements or to wild beasts, when their presence became a burden, with the present practice of erecting orphans' homes, homes for the aged, and asylums for the helpless.

國無常強，無常弱。奉法者強則國強，奉法者弱則國弱。
Source: "On Having Standards", in Han Feizi: Basic Writings (2003)

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 94

If This Is a Man (1947)
Source: If This Is a Man / The Truce

Source: La joie (Joy) 1929, p.107